A small, little town by a lake. The most innocent of locations can hide the darkest secrets. The most charming exteriors can reveal the ugliest truths. It would happen in a small little town by a foggy lake, and it would begin inside a blue van, with four heavily armed criminals.
The blue van was parked off the road next to the chain link fence that surrounded some small warehouses. The windows were tinted and the engines off, but a moment later the back doors opened and four men stepped out. Dallas, Chains, Wolf, and Hoxton: The Payday Gang.
Dallas and Hoxton immediately cut the fence and crept inside, silenced weapons leading the way as they carefully and silently snuck down to a building. Wolf and Chains stood back at the gap, both with heavy armor and heavier guns, waiting for the all-clear. There were no cameras outside the building, and few lights.
The lock on the door was simple, and Hoxton picked it in a moment. They snuck inside, and in that moment you could've cut the air with a knife, the team split up and out of sight of one another. But then a hand in a blue latex glove stuck out of the open door and gave a thumbs-up. Wolf and Chains followed easily, and then all four were inside the warehouse.
"No cameras, no guards. We're in the clear. Split up and start looking for the goods, Hoxton's getting into the office" Dallas said in his somewhat raspy voice. The three of them exchanged a nod and then started to each go their own way down rows of shelves and piles of crates.
Wolf was the first to speak up. "Well this place looks like a real shithole."
Chains responded quickly, "I think you mean this whole town is a shithole. So what, they've got a lake, an amusement park, and they sell drugs to the tourists?"
"I don't get it either, but they're selling the stuff and now we're stealing it," Dallas called from the other side of the building.
"Maybe it's like those people who go to a different state to smoke weed? But it's a town and whatever the fuck this stuff is?" Wolf was nudging the lid of an unmarked crate.
Chains let out a huff and made his retort, "Yeah right. Come to Silent Hill! Swim in the lake! Ride our crappy rides! Get high as a fuckin' kite!"
Everyone's attention was snapped to the sound of a door opening and Hoxton's voice calm, but loud enough to be noticed, "If you don't mind cutting your vacation planning short, I've got the office open."
There was a wide space between the crates and the office, where a vehicle or two could've been parked, with folding tables stacked up against the wall. Only a bare minimum of light was trickling in from the outside, and the gang mostly made their way through the flashlights attached to their guns. It was somewhat isolating, the four of them seeing only by small cones of light in the darkness.
The office maintained the sparse and somewhat cheap atmosphere of the warehouse, but looking quite out of place in the corner was a sizable, tall safe. Hoxton knelt in front of it and took out a far more intricate set of lockpicks, starting to crack the safe while the other's made sure there was nothing else of value.
"Maybe you need to get high to enjoy the roller coaster?" Wolf piped up after a moment.
"Or maybe they can only sell this stuff to tourists because it's all a bunch of crap and they can't sell it to anyone who knows where they live," Dallas answered, not looking up from the loose papers he was shuffling through.
"I don't know man, they killed that mayor, remember?"
Chains let out a groan, "Wolf, the dude had a heart problem. Corner said he was going to go anyway."
Wolf was about to say something, but Hoxton cut in first: "Y'know, this isn't a delicate operation or anything that requires a lot of concentration on my part, you can keep on talking."
"Yeah, yeah. I'm going to go check outside," Chains said as he started heading towards the door, shouldering his assault rifle.
"Don't get lost," Dallas helpfully chimed before Chains got too far.
One he was outside, Chains stopped to look off in the direction of the lake. The fog was beginning to roll inland in force, a thick wall of obscuring mist. There was no sigh or sound of another soul in the area, only the quiet whisperings of the wind bringing the fog and rustling through the leaves. In a strange way it was very peaceful as the mist covered the area, obscuring everything distant.
At first there was only a faint wailing howl on the wind, barely audible. Chains barely heard it, and the sound didn't get his attention until Dallas stepped outside and cocked an ear upwards. "What the hell is that?" he asked loud.
"What's what?"
"You don't hear it? Sound like… an air siren? Who the hell would set off an air siren at two in the morning?"
Chains was nearly about to answer, but then a far louder sound took their attention.
Something hit the metal roof of the warehouse. It sounded as though it slammed into the side facing the lake, then dragged across the roof with a wet, slumping sound. Just as it seemed ready to fall off the other side, these deep wet flapping sounds began, carrying whatever it was off into the distance.
"What the…" Dallas began to say in barely a whisper.
"…Fuck was that?" Chains finished for him.
Chains and Dallas silently fell in to formation, creeping around to the back of the building, eyes locked on the edge of the roof. There was no sign of whatever had hit the building, but the sirens seemed somewhat louder. Chains and Dallas looked at each other, making eye contact before hurrying back inside.
The first thing that happened was that Wolf pointed the flashlight on his gun at them, but he lowered his gun when he saw the flashes of color on their masks. "The fuck was that?" he asked with a note of panic.
"I don't know. I don't want to. Hoxt, you find the stuff?" Dallas said, hurrying to the office.
"Two bag's worth. We have anything else to do here?" Hoxton just finished zipping up the blue duffle bags.
"Hell no, let's get out," Dallas said as he immediately went to sling one over his shoulder, and Hoxton took the other. "Chains my friend, take the lead. Wolf you get the rear."
The two nodded and the men fell into a line, hurrying as carefully as they could. Anything could have been waiting for them outside in the fog, with just the eerie wail of the siren carried on the wind. Wolf quietly pulled the door closed as they started towards the fence, the fog seemingly motionless around them.
"Wasn't the van… closer?" Wolf asked after a moment.
"It's just the fog, calm down buddy," Hoxton answered shortly.
Still, even if it was just an illusion, it felt as though it took longer to reach the van again. But they reached the cut gap and slipped through, and there was the blue van waiting for them. Dallas got into the driver's seat and the rest piled into the back of the van perhaps faster than they did when they were under fire from the police.
It was after they were driving away and got their masks off that they felt like they could breathe. The normally calm Hoxton as the first to speak, "What the hell was that back there? Some bird hit the roof or something?"
"It sounded way too big for a bird. And what the hell kind of bird flies into a roof like that? Owls would see that shit," Chains shook his head as he slowly took off the pieces of his bulletproof armor.
"You know…" Wolf started, hesitantly, "I read a…"
"I swear to God, Wolf, the next words out of your mouth had better not be 'A Steven King novel,'" Chains snapped back immediately.
"But I did! This was totally out of a Steven King book!"
"Wolf, Steven King writes fiction. Some asshole was running a siren, some fog rolled in, and a bird or bat or something hit the roof. It's only spooky because it's the middle of the night and it all happened at the same time," Hoxton cut in, before turning towards the driver's seat, "Hey, can't we get going faster?"
Dallas snapped back an annoyed reply, "You see how foggy it is out there? I can't drive fast when I can't see far enough ahead to know where I'm going!"
The van was crawling along well below the speed limit, the fog so thick that the road was obscured a few car lengths in front of the van. Every bend and curve in the road seemed to come upon them quickly. There was no time to react unless they drove slowly.
Hoxton moved up to kneel behind the armrest in the front, looking ahead at the foggy road. As they reached a straight, flat stretch of road Dallas without looking opened the armrest storage compartment and handed a slip of paper to Hoxton, saying, "Here, call Bain and tell him we got the stuff."
Hoxton did, but a look of confusion spread across his features as he listened for a dial tone. Still confused he dialed the number again and waited for an answer. Finally he shook his head, "The call's not going through. I've got a good signal, but the call's not going through. You wrote down the right number, right?"
"Of course I wrote down the right number. Wolf, Chains, you guys try the number," Dallas sounded even more annoyed. Everyone in the car tried the number in turn, and for all of them the result was the same: Good signal, but the call would not go through.
"Well, who wants to talk to Bain anyway?" Chains asked after a moment of awkward, contemplative silence at the failure of all their phones at once.
"Yeah, he'd tell us to grab the thermal drill, babysit the civilians, invest in bitcoins… fuck 'im, let him wait for a while. We don't get enough quiet time," Wolf added, with the halting in his voice that comes from someone nervous trying to sound sure.
But no one had anything to say. All of these events happening so closely together was unnerving. Four phones failing at the same time, after the fog and the crash and the sirens… it was all too much to happen at once.
The silence persisted, punctuated only by the small sounds of the gang trying to keep themselves occupied. Dallas drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, watching the road carefully. Chains was idly pretending to adjust the sights of his weapon. Wolf was absorbed in some colorful game on his phone, and Hoxton had his eyes closed in either rest or meditation.
They rode without speaking for a long time. Perhaps they felt that any conversation would only expose their fears and worries. With no way to tell how the time was passing it was difficult to know how long they'd been driving. Privately, each began to think that they should have gotten to their temporary safehouse by now, even with Dallas driving slowly.
Finally Dallas broke the silence as he leaned forward to look at the sky. "Uh… guys? It shouldn't be getting light out there."
That sent everyone to the windows. Slowly the brightness grew. It never reached pure daylight, and the fog never lifted. The light reached that strange, directionless twilight that happens on a grey, foggy winter day.
But while the fog never lifted, it seemed to spread out and form a clear area around the van, just enough so that they could see the sides of the road. Enough to see that they were driving through the town of Silent Hill itself.
The streets were empty. There was not a soul on the sidewalk or a car parked along the road. Had any of them been outside than an oppressive silence would have battered their ears with the absence of the sounds that normally accompany any level of community. The buildings all showed signs of age as well.
Windows were streaked with grime. Faded posters in fashions twenty years out of date hung inside of them. Some windows were broken and boarded up, as though the building was abandoned to the ravages of time. Their silence still reigned until Dallas broke it once more with a "What the fuck?"
On the right side of the road was the Harvest & Trustee Bank from DC. Not a bank of the same branch, the same bank that they had robbed in DC. The small courtyard with the diagonal green sign (now with faded and flaking paint). The fenced off back lot. Even from what they could see of the interior, the interior was identical, except for age.
Suddenly a harsh electric blaring filled the car from all of their phones. Once they were finished jumpin in surprise they all looked to their phones, and saw it was one of the lines normally reserved for Bain's instructions. They all looked up at each other, normally there was only one call. Dallas hesitantly answered it and held the phone up to his ear.
He needn't have bothered. Suddenly all of their phones answered the call, and all of them were suddenly on speaker mode. The voice on the other line was not Bain. Voice was actually a misnomer, each phone had a different voice, but they all spoke with the same inflection and timing, a monotonous and droning chorus. "The thermal drill is in the back. Go get it. Get the thermal drill. Get the thermal drill. Get the thermal drill. Get the thermal drill. Get the-"
The call ended as suddenly as it began. The gang all made eye contact, and everyone seemed a shade paler than normal. Dallas's shoulders slumped a bit as he felt the sudden weight of everyone looking to him, the mastermind, for direction. When he first tried to speak nothing came out, he had to clear his throat to find his voice: "I don't like this. Armor up, we're going in heavy."
The blue van was parked off the road next to the chain link fence that surrounded some small warehouses. The windows were tinted and the engines off, but a moment later the back doors opened and four men stepped out. Dallas, Chains, Wolf, and Hoxton: The Payday Gang.
Dallas and Hoxton immediately cut the fence and crept inside, silenced weapons leading the way as they carefully and silently snuck down to a building. Wolf and Chains stood back at the gap, both with heavy armor and heavier guns, waiting for the all-clear. There were no cameras outside the building, and few lights.
The lock on the door was simple, and Hoxton picked it in a moment. They snuck inside, and in that moment you could've cut the air with a knife, the team split up and out of sight of one another. But then a hand in a blue latex glove stuck out of the open door and gave a thumbs-up. Wolf and Chains followed easily, and then all four were inside the warehouse.
"No cameras, no guards. We're in the clear. Split up and start looking for the goods, Hoxton's getting into the office" Dallas said in his somewhat raspy voice. The three of them exchanged a nod and then started to each go their own way down rows of shelves and piles of crates.
Wolf was the first to speak up. "Well this place looks like a real shithole."
Chains responded quickly, "I think you mean this whole town is a shithole. So what, they've got a lake, an amusement park, and they sell drugs to the tourists?"
"I don't get it either, but they're selling the stuff and now we're stealing it," Dallas called from the other side of the building.
"Maybe it's like those people who go to a different state to smoke weed? But it's a town and whatever the fuck this stuff is?" Wolf was nudging the lid of an unmarked crate.
Chains let out a huff and made his retort, "Yeah right. Come to Silent Hill! Swim in the lake! Ride our crappy rides! Get high as a fuckin' kite!"
Everyone's attention was snapped to the sound of a door opening and Hoxton's voice calm, but loud enough to be noticed, "If you don't mind cutting your vacation planning short, I've got the office open."
There was a wide space between the crates and the office, where a vehicle or two could've been parked, with folding tables stacked up against the wall. Only a bare minimum of light was trickling in from the outside, and the gang mostly made their way through the flashlights attached to their guns. It was somewhat isolating, the four of them seeing only by small cones of light in the darkness.
The office maintained the sparse and somewhat cheap atmosphere of the warehouse, but looking quite out of place in the corner was a sizable, tall safe. Hoxton knelt in front of it and took out a far more intricate set of lockpicks, starting to crack the safe while the other's made sure there was nothing else of value.
"Maybe you need to get high to enjoy the roller coaster?" Wolf piped up after a moment.
"Or maybe they can only sell this stuff to tourists because it's all a bunch of crap and they can't sell it to anyone who knows where they live," Dallas answered, not looking up from the loose papers he was shuffling through.
"I don't know man, they killed that mayor, remember?"
Chains let out a groan, "Wolf, the dude had a heart problem. Corner said he was going to go anyway."
Wolf was about to say something, but Hoxton cut in first: "Y'know, this isn't a delicate operation or anything that requires a lot of concentration on my part, you can keep on talking."
"Yeah, yeah. I'm going to go check outside," Chains said as he started heading towards the door, shouldering his assault rifle.
"Don't get lost," Dallas helpfully chimed before Chains got too far.
One he was outside, Chains stopped to look off in the direction of the lake. The fog was beginning to roll inland in force, a thick wall of obscuring mist. There was no sigh or sound of another soul in the area, only the quiet whisperings of the wind bringing the fog and rustling through the leaves. In a strange way it was very peaceful as the mist covered the area, obscuring everything distant.
At first there was only a faint wailing howl on the wind, barely audible. Chains barely heard it, and the sound didn't get his attention until Dallas stepped outside and cocked an ear upwards. "What the hell is that?" he asked loud.
"What's what?"
"You don't hear it? Sound like… an air siren? Who the hell would set off an air siren at two in the morning?"
Chains was nearly about to answer, but then a far louder sound took their attention.
Something hit the metal roof of the warehouse. It sounded as though it slammed into the side facing the lake, then dragged across the roof with a wet, slumping sound. Just as it seemed ready to fall off the other side, these deep wet flapping sounds began, carrying whatever it was off into the distance.
"What the…" Dallas began to say in barely a whisper.
"…Fuck was that?" Chains finished for him.
Chains and Dallas silently fell in to formation, creeping around to the back of the building, eyes locked on the edge of the roof. There was no sign of whatever had hit the building, but the sirens seemed somewhat louder. Chains and Dallas looked at each other, making eye contact before hurrying back inside.
The first thing that happened was that Wolf pointed the flashlight on his gun at them, but he lowered his gun when he saw the flashes of color on their masks. "The fuck was that?" he asked with a note of panic.
"I don't know. I don't want to. Hoxt, you find the stuff?" Dallas said, hurrying to the office.
"Two bag's worth. We have anything else to do here?" Hoxton just finished zipping up the blue duffle bags.
"Hell no, let's get out," Dallas said as he immediately went to sling one over his shoulder, and Hoxton took the other. "Chains my friend, take the lead. Wolf you get the rear."
The two nodded and the men fell into a line, hurrying as carefully as they could. Anything could have been waiting for them outside in the fog, with just the eerie wail of the siren carried on the wind. Wolf quietly pulled the door closed as they started towards the fence, the fog seemingly motionless around them.
"Wasn't the van… closer?" Wolf asked after a moment.
"It's just the fog, calm down buddy," Hoxton answered shortly.
Still, even if it was just an illusion, it felt as though it took longer to reach the van again. But they reached the cut gap and slipped through, and there was the blue van waiting for them. Dallas got into the driver's seat and the rest piled into the back of the van perhaps faster than they did when they were under fire from the police.
It was after they were driving away and got their masks off that they felt like they could breathe. The normally calm Hoxton as the first to speak, "What the hell was that back there? Some bird hit the roof or something?"
"It sounded way too big for a bird. And what the hell kind of bird flies into a roof like that? Owls would see that shit," Chains shook his head as he slowly took off the pieces of his bulletproof armor.
"You know…" Wolf started, hesitantly, "I read a…"
"I swear to God, Wolf, the next words out of your mouth had better not be 'A Steven King novel,'" Chains snapped back immediately.
"But I did! This was totally out of a Steven King book!"
"Wolf, Steven King writes fiction. Some asshole was running a siren, some fog rolled in, and a bird or bat or something hit the roof. It's only spooky because it's the middle of the night and it all happened at the same time," Hoxton cut in, before turning towards the driver's seat, "Hey, can't we get going faster?"
Dallas snapped back an annoyed reply, "You see how foggy it is out there? I can't drive fast when I can't see far enough ahead to know where I'm going!"
The van was crawling along well below the speed limit, the fog so thick that the road was obscured a few car lengths in front of the van. Every bend and curve in the road seemed to come upon them quickly. There was no time to react unless they drove slowly.
Hoxton moved up to kneel behind the armrest in the front, looking ahead at the foggy road. As they reached a straight, flat stretch of road Dallas without looking opened the armrest storage compartment and handed a slip of paper to Hoxton, saying, "Here, call Bain and tell him we got the stuff."
Hoxton did, but a look of confusion spread across his features as he listened for a dial tone. Still confused he dialed the number again and waited for an answer. Finally he shook his head, "The call's not going through. I've got a good signal, but the call's not going through. You wrote down the right number, right?"
"Of course I wrote down the right number. Wolf, Chains, you guys try the number," Dallas sounded even more annoyed. Everyone in the car tried the number in turn, and for all of them the result was the same: Good signal, but the call would not go through.
"Well, who wants to talk to Bain anyway?" Chains asked after a moment of awkward, contemplative silence at the failure of all their phones at once.
"Yeah, he'd tell us to grab the thermal drill, babysit the civilians, invest in bitcoins… fuck 'im, let him wait for a while. We don't get enough quiet time," Wolf added, with the halting in his voice that comes from someone nervous trying to sound sure.
But no one had anything to say. All of these events happening so closely together was unnerving. Four phones failing at the same time, after the fog and the crash and the sirens… it was all too much to happen at once.
The silence persisted, punctuated only by the small sounds of the gang trying to keep themselves occupied. Dallas drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, watching the road carefully. Chains was idly pretending to adjust the sights of his weapon. Wolf was absorbed in some colorful game on his phone, and Hoxton had his eyes closed in either rest or meditation.
They rode without speaking for a long time. Perhaps they felt that any conversation would only expose their fears and worries. With no way to tell how the time was passing it was difficult to know how long they'd been driving. Privately, each began to think that they should have gotten to their temporary safehouse by now, even with Dallas driving slowly.
Finally Dallas broke the silence as he leaned forward to look at the sky. "Uh… guys? It shouldn't be getting light out there."
That sent everyone to the windows. Slowly the brightness grew. It never reached pure daylight, and the fog never lifted. The light reached that strange, directionless twilight that happens on a grey, foggy winter day.
But while the fog never lifted, it seemed to spread out and form a clear area around the van, just enough so that they could see the sides of the road. Enough to see that they were driving through the town of Silent Hill itself.
The streets were empty. There was not a soul on the sidewalk or a car parked along the road. Had any of them been outside than an oppressive silence would have battered their ears with the absence of the sounds that normally accompany any level of community. The buildings all showed signs of age as well.
Windows were streaked with grime. Faded posters in fashions twenty years out of date hung inside of them. Some windows were broken and boarded up, as though the building was abandoned to the ravages of time. Their silence still reigned until Dallas broke it once more with a "What the fuck?"
On the right side of the road was the Harvest & Trustee Bank from DC. Not a bank of the same branch, the same bank that they had robbed in DC. The small courtyard with the diagonal green sign (now with faded and flaking paint). The fenced off back lot. Even from what they could see of the interior, the interior was identical, except for age.
Suddenly a harsh electric blaring filled the car from all of their phones. Once they were finished jumpin in surprise they all looked to their phones, and saw it was one of the lines normally reserved for Bain's instructions. They all looked up at each other, normally there was only one call. Dallas hesitantly answered it and held the phone up to his ear.
He needn't have bothered. Suddenly all of their phones answered the call, and all of them were suddenly on speaker mode. The voice on the other line was not Bain. Voice was actually a misnomer, each phone had a different voice, but they all spoke with the same inflection and timing, a monotonous and droning chorus. "The thermal drill is in the back. Go get it. Get the thermal drill. Get the thermal drill. Get the thermal drill. Get the thermal drill. Get the-"
The call ended as suddenly as it began. The gang all made eye contact, and everyone seemed a shade paler than normal. Dallas's shoulders slumped a bit as he felt the sudden weight of everyone looking to him, the mastermind, for direction. When he first tried to speak nothing came out, he had to clear his throat to find his voice: "I don't like this. Armor up, we're going in heavy."